a shot in the dark
by the hikikomori life
Summary: Watanuki has a recurring nightmare.


**Shot in the Dark**

Watanuki picks his way across the debris of this lunar wasteland, the treads of his boots slipping in the dark earth. Torn steel girders protrude treacherously from jagged cliff-sides, a testament to human settlements long lost and forgotten. From horizon to dusty horizon, the sky is the color of burnt umber, and roils with turbulent clouds. Black shapes like monstrous crows wheel high overhead, in ever-tightening circles. All desolation, as far as the eye can see, and no sound but the shriek of wind rushing past his ears.

A slight movement at the corner of his eye attracts his attention, and he whirls to face it, heart fluttering in his chest. There, snuffling under a rock as it searches for sustenance, is a small quadrupedal creature, its many beady black eyes wandering ceaselessly. Finding none, it shuffles onwards, and its small figure is soon lost to the dust and wind.

Watanuki lets out a shuddery breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding, and lowers the tip of his canister rifle to the ground. If anyone saw him, they'd think he was losing it. But he isn't, he's fine, he's just... he's got to keep it together, or else -

The miniature cloaking device built into his hostile environment suit takes a few moments to kick in. At times like these, he's almost grateful for his training and all the neural augmentations done during his time "in quarantine", a neutral Terran Confederacy euphemism for the ghost program - the state-sponsored military training of telepathically-gifted children. _Almost _grateful... but not quite. He tugs the visor down over his eyes, and his silhouette shimmers for a moment around the edges, like a mirage, before fading away entirely.

It's past 0100 hours by the time he returns to base. He takes a deep, uncertain breath, then palms the access point positioned waist-high on the wall next to the entrance to his room. In one smooth motion the doors slide back, accompanied by the faint hissing of hydraulics.

He is greeted by the sight of Doumeki's back, arrow-straight, in the dark room. As always, Doumeki is seated in front of the terminal, diligently tapping away at the keyboard. For a brief moment, Watanuki is seized by a sense of disquiet, but as Doumeki turns to regard him, it quickly slips away.

"Long day?" says Doumeki, by way of greeting.

In two strides Watanuki reaches the side of his small cot, and plunks himself down on it with a sigh, kicking off his dusty boots. "You don't know the half of it." He slips his glasses off, sets them on the desk near Doumeki's hands, and lies down flat on top of the sheets.

Doumeki makes a sound that is almost sympathetic. The familiar, ever-present sound of his typing soothes Watanuki, a balm for his frayed nerves.

"Try me."

With a sigh, Watanuki throws an arm up over his eyes to block out the glow from the terminal, and says -

"_What is your major malfunction? I told you to leave me alone!"_

_Doumeki only says, in that deep, calm voice of his, "You should get more rest. You look tired."_

"_That's none of your business," snaps Watanuki. He knows he's being unreasonable, but somehow he can't stop himself from lashing out, not to mention Doumeki always presents himself as an easy target. "And it's Lieutenant to you, soldier."_

"_You look tired, _sir_," says Doumeki, not missing a beat. Watanuki bristles, sputters, and then brushes past him angrily, striding down the corridor as quickly as he can without looking ridiculous. He can't explain _why _he's so angry, but it still takes all his restraint not to explode when Doumeki falls into step just behind him._

"_Stop following me, damn it! What's the matter with you?"_

"_Nothing," says Doumeki, and if Watanuki didn't know better, he would have said that Doumeki even looked a little hurt. "It's __just that -"_

Watanuki keeps having this dream, this same dream, where - where Doumeki gets hurt. It's something he can't put into words, the same way he can never tell Doumeki or anyone else about the dream, or... or - well - he knows it sounds crazy, but if he tells anyone, just a single living soul - if he should dare to acknowledge its monstrous existence - it feels like the dream will tear right through the fabric that keeps nightmare separate from reality, and become truth.

Tonight, again - it's happened more times that he can count - he wakes up to discover Doumeki shaking him frantically, something that looks a lot like fear etched into the lines of his face. The room is dark, the shadows on the walls long - it must be late, although he doesn't remember when, exactly, he fell asleep. It's getting harder to remember things, now; every day it feels like he loses a little bit more of himself. Distantly, he realizes that Doumeki is speaking, but the words are garbled - distorted, as though he's listening to Doumeki over a channel full of static. (Try as he might, he can't erase the image burned into the backs of his eyelids: slavering jaws dripping with gore, gnawing lazily on a severed hand, white and bloodless as a lump of chalk.)

At long last, his heart rate begins to normalize. Doumeki's voice, growing clearer by the second, cuts through the fog of sleep and terror, anchoring him to reality. This isn't real. It's only a dream; yes, he can see that now. He focuses on Doumeki's lips, and finally begins to make out the words they're forming.

"Watanuki. Watanuki."

"Sorry," Watanuki breathes, shakily, and then, "I'm here. Doumeki."

"Watanuki," Doumeki says again, this time in the crook of his neck. Watanuki feels the hot breath on his throat, the tears on his own face, and realizes with a start that nothing's right at all. And perhaps he'd known all along that it would be this way, what with them being in this line of work, out in the sticks on this backwater moon in this backwater solar system. Ever since that day when Doumeki had walked up to him and said,

"_This seat taken?"_

"_... What?"_

_Watanuki, seated alone at his usual table in the mess hall, looks up from his bog-standard meal in its battered steel tray - two slices of processed meat, some bread, a pannikin of lukewarm stew. Before him towers a marine in a ragged wife-beater and regulation trousers, his bulk in stark contrast to Watanuki's slight frame._

"_I want to sit here," he repeats, slowly, as though Watanuki is simple._

_Watanuki merely raises an eyebrow. Across the room, gathered around some tables pushed together end-to-end, a group of marines is laughing raucously, swigging beer and playing cards. He cocks his head in their direction, and then waves a hand at the marine, dismissively._

"_Go dick around with the other meatheads from your squad. That's where you belong, anyway."_

"_I don't drink," comes the reply._

"_I don't care."_

_The marine doesn't bat an eye. "So it's not taken?"_

"_... No," says Watanuki, grudgingly. "It isn't."_

But these days Watanuki eats alone, and if he takes a little extra back to his room for Doumeki, well, nobody's ever brought it up. The atmosphere took a turn for the worse, ever since _it_ happened - no more gambling in the mess hall, little chatter in the corridors. People are more somber now, more haggard. They do what they have to do, and don't stick around to chat. Everywhere Watanuki goes, he sees the white new scars from freshly-healed wounds, the faraway looks of pain and loss.

He doesn't really mind, though. The quiet gives him time to think. To remember -

"_You again," says Watanuki. He can't even be bothered to sound annoyed anymore, that's how long this has been going on. And still Doumeki persists in being a thorn in his side. "Don't ex-cons have better things to do than bother superior officers all the time?"_

"_I'm not an ex-con," says Doumeki. At that, Watanuki stares at him._

"_Sure you are," he says, though seeming less certain now. "Aren't all marines?"_

"_Not me," says Doumeki, sounding as unconcerned as ever. "I volunteered."_

_Watanuki snorts. "You'd have to be crazy to volunteer for this."_

_Doumeki doesn't look up from his rifle, though the hand which holds the polishing cloth pauses for just a moment. "Maybe so," he says, at last, his eyes lowered. "But at least I'm content."_

Watanuki can't remember what that's like; if there's ever been a time when he felt that way. Perhaps he's always been miserable. At night he wakes up hyperventilating - alone in the dark, only he isn't, and he buries himself against Doumeki's side in anguish. _I love you, you know_, he wants to say, _I love you, I love you, don't ever leave me!_ But the words die in his throat before he can give voice to them. The room is quiet and cold and black, and Watanuki does not wake up alone. But when at last he sleeps again, the nightmare returns, and there is no one sitting at the darkened console, typing away -

_In his spare time, Doumeki writes. Always tapping away at the keyboard, writing and writing, and Watanuki's not quite nosy enough to stand behind him and read over his shoulder, but damned if he doesn't want to know what Doumeki's up to, anyway._

_One time he even tried asking - not that it got him anywhere._

"_Who are you writing to all the time?"_

"_Family," says Doumeki, tersely, which Watanuki takes to mean, don't ask._

"_...Well, I can't believe a guy like you has someone back home to even write to," says Watanuki, putting all the scorn, all the disdain he can manage into his voice. Doumeki doesn't reply. He continues typing, and his expression seems carved in stone. The silence hangs between them awkwardly, and for a brief moment Watanuki even considers, perhaps, apologizing. For everything, everything he's done and said, all the horrible dismissive things and every time Doumeki tried to reach out his hand and Watanuki just slapped it away. But then -_

Watanuki wakes up in bed screaming. He screams and screams until it seems his throat will burst, and nothing will get him to stop. At first the medics think he's in pain, and rush to his side. He isn't in physical pain, not really, but today is the first time he's seen the nightmare, and the shock of it is more than he can bear. They end up tranquilizing him and putting a drip in his arm, keeping him out cold so that the other patients can get some peace and quiet. Even so, sometimes the faint voices at his bedside penetrate his drug-addled mind, and he strains, desperately, to make out what they're saying:

"What happened to _him_?"

"Dunno. They fished him out of the wreckage of the armory a few days after it was all over. Honestly I'm surprised he even lasted that long. Don't look like much, does he?"

"Sure don't. But you know, I heard he took out a whole pack of Hydras all by himself before he went down. Held 'em off in the hallway, before the roof caved in."

"No kidding! This little runt did? Man, what do they teach those guys over at the Ghost Academy?"

"Well, whatever it was, it sure gave him a mighty fine set of lungs, didn't it."

The voices laugh, though they don't sound amused in the least. And Watanuki wants to say _wait, don't go - Doumeki, where's Doumeki, where is he_ - but the drug-fog is rising again, and before he knows it, he's gone. 

* * *

_Watanuki, (this one reads. It wasn't his family, it was never his family after all -)_

_I'm sorry._

_For everything -_

* * *

Watanuki isn't sure what seizes him, exactly: call it a momentary madness. But one day, he gets back to his room and finds Doumeki there, as always - typing, and typing, and typing away - and as he's staring silently at Doumeki's back, the strong shoulders, the short-cropped hair, it all comes bursting out of him at once; the sleepless nights, his bloody dreams, the reason why he wakes up screaming -

_He is running down a hallway, running as though his life depends on it. Klaxons wail in the distance - they've breached the base defenses. Distant explosions rock the facility; the lights flicker once, and then go out entirely. He rounds a corner, where another explosion throws him haplessly to the ground. Only his reflexes save him from narrowly being crushed by falling debris, but still he finds himself pinned under a chunk of what used to be the ceiling. He struggles to free himself, even as the walls shatter and crumble to dust around him._

_And that's when he hears it - the growling, the hissing, the bestial slobbering, so close that it feels as though they're right beside him. Terror rises in his throat, tasting of bile. For a moment he thinks of screaming for help, but there's no one to hear him, no one will come - no one _can_ come. This, this must be the end -_

"_Watanuki."_

_Watanuki looks up. His vision is blurred; he can't quite tell by sight who it is. But he knows that voice. He _knows_ -_

"_Can you hear me? Watanuki."_

_Somewhere nearby, there's a high-pitched scream, abruptly cut short. A thud, then the sound of skittering, of scales slithering sinuously over steel. With a great effort, Watanuki spits out a few words. It hurts to talk, but somehow, he manages._

"_Go - leave me. Don't … die here. You can't -"_

_Instead, the figure kneels beside him, the muzzle of his rifle clanking against the ground by Watanuki's head. A broad hand moves over his chest - no, over the controls of the hostile environment suit, as though searching for something. His cloaking device. The figure switches it on, and then stands back up. And Watanuki realizes what he's doing._

"_No," he says, and then coughs, blood filling his mouth, blood that he can no longer see. His own hands fade away before his eyes. "Don't do this - you _mustn't _-"_

"_Watanuki," says the figure, now walking away, his strides long and fearless. "Watanuki." There is warmth in his voice. He does not turn back around. "I. I -"_

_Gunfire drowns out the rest of his words. A rapid hail of bullets - inhuman screeching - a shout of pain. And then nothing. And after a while - after a long, long while, there is no sound except the constant drip... drip... drip of blood pooling on the ground, nearby, and his own ragged sobs._

Silence falls. Slowly, Watanuki becomes aware of how Doumeki is watching him - just staring quietly. He doesn't even look surprised. He just... looks. And eventually, after many long minutes, Watanuki becomes aware of something else altogether - a different kind of silence, like a hole in his chest, where his heart ought to be, the silence of being completely and utterly alone -

He stands, abruptly, and turns his back to Doumeki and his horrible empty stare.

"I should get back to work," he says, and his voice trembles slightly.

"Behind him, Doumeki raises a hand in an ironic half-salute to his back. He doesn't quite smile, but perhaps there's a suggestion of it hovering around his cold lips.

"I'll be here."

As the automatic door hisses shut behind Watanuki, a passing medic shoots him a curious look.

"Who were you talking to, lieutenant?"

Watanuki just looks at her, and smiles.

**fin.**


End file.
